REGINA — A potent drug currently going around in Regina is leading to a spike in overdoses.
On Friday, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health put out an overdose alert after the Newo Yotina Friendship Centre sampled a drug which had a concerning concentration of fentanyl and benzodiazepines.
Emile Gariepy, harm reduction manager at Newo Yotina Friendship Centre, said Regina Fire had been responding to a large number of overdose calls a week or two before the drug testing.
“They responded to like 16 or something [overdoses] like that in one day. It was a big number.”
The Newo Yotina Friendship Centre operates an overdose prevention site, which is supervised.
Gariepy said an individual had used the drug and found it to be dangerous after overdosing.
Unlike fentanyl, benzodiazepine overdoses cannot be reversed with naloxone.
“The only thing we could do here is oxygenate them. We have oxygen tanks [and] so we would just oxygenate them until an ambulance shows up,” said Gariepy.
Gariepy said he’s been trying to get his hands on the drug for a while now, as it's popular for drug dealers.
“Drug dealers or the manufacturers or whoever's doing it add that [benzodiazepine] into it [the fentanyl] to add a little bit more weight and to make their product cheaper but also still effective.”
“So that's what makes it dangerous when you start playing with how much Benzodiazepine you're putting into the drug itself,” he added.
With this recent finding, Gariepy said more people have been getting their drugs checked at the site.
“It is their decision and their choice and their drugs. They can make that decision themselves. We don't force people to test their drugs, but we do encourage it a lot.”
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Health said the health risk expands beyond Regina as drug supplies move between communities.
Gariepy said he is unaware of any other harm reduction site nearby that is encountering the same drug.
The overdose alert remains in effect until Nov. 26.
SaskToday reached out to the Ministry of Health for more details, which said more information on overdose alerts can be found here.
